As our project on the interactive 3D model of decatur street in the 1930s continues, we have come to face challenges fearlessly. Some of the biggest challenges we are facing include historically accurate 3d modeling, finding pictures of the actual buildings that were there at the time, and filling all the historical holes from which we have to sort through what seems like a limited amount of information about the street. In order to tackle and overcome these issues, we reached out to emory because there was word that they were working on a similar project, except at a much larger scope. It seemed that they were working on a 3D model of the entire city of Atlanta based on the findings of numerous archival maps. We decoded to reach out to the people working on this project in order to gain some insight and information that could ultimately help and reduce the risk of replicating their project.
We did a video conference with someone who was leading the project at Emory and found a lot of commonality between the two projects, although Emory was working on the entire city while we are focusing on a specific street. We ultimately came to the decision that we could possibly join forces to aid each other on the project. We could help with their large scope project, reach out to other universities or interested partners, and seek funding all in order to have the resources to accurately and efficiently complete our projects. It seemed as though it were a reality check to see all that was still necessary to achieve the excellence and complexity that we wanted for the 3D model.
Although it was an eye-opener everyone on the project came together to decide that it was best if we united forces with those from Emory and possibly researchers at Georgia Tech. We are working on looking for an experienced 3d modeler and gaining more references and images of the buildings to therefore accurately replicate them. Ultimately the conclusion although the road to our goal has gotten a bit more difficult we have gained important knowledge needed to fight these challenges and overcome them.
It will be interesting to see a 3D model of Decatur Street. Particularly, I’d love to see the Old City Hall where 55 Marietta Street stands now. I’m sure you’ve already spent some time on, just about my most favorite site in the world,
Sounds great! I am glad you are interested int the project, which makes my research and efforts much more rewarding. I actually have not come across the website, so thank you so much for introducing it to us! it will be very helpful to look through and see if we cant find some pictures of the buildings on the street! If you know of any other places where we can find pictures relevant to the street and time period, please let me know! Thanks!